Centrala begrepp
Dogs, like Donut, can potentially smell time through their keen sense of smell and the changing odors in their environment.
Sammanfattning
Donut, a hound mix dog, had a unique ability to predict the arrival of the school bus every day with remarkable precision. Psychologist Alexandra Horowitz suggests that dogs use environmental cues and scents to estimate time. Donut's skill likely stemmed from her acute sense of smell and her ability to track changes in odors over time. This intriguing story sheds light on how dogs perceive time differently than humans, hinting at a deeper understanding of physics through olfaction.
Statistik
"Every weekday, before the bus dropped off the boys, Donut, without fail, would hop up from the rug, go to the back porch and sit by the window."
"Dogs... have fluctuating hormones that help create a built-in clock in their bodies and minds."
"They also look at the amount of light shining into a room or even the angle of the sun."
"Dogs are living in basically an olfactory world..."
"Humans stink, even the very clean among us..."
"...their living room would stink to high heaven with the signature scent of two prepubescent boys."
"...there's no question Donut noticed the slow diminishment of Matt's scent over the course of the day."
"Donut probably learned to associate that level of odor with the imminent return of Matt and his brother..."
"...Donut literally smelled time pass."
"...odors have 'time baked into them' in a way that visual cues don't."
Citat
"Dogs are living in basically an olfactory world..." - Alexandra Horowitz
"We're always sloughing skin cells and leaving behind little trails of odor." - Alexandra Horowitz
"Odors that are lying on the ground or on the sidewalk outside tell us — or dogs — about the past." - Alexandra Horowitz
"So they might experience spaces, recognize things and have memories in smell." - Alexandra Horowitz
"Every animal probably does that to determine whether something's OK to eat. It's biologically adaptive." - Gregory Berns